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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
Liberals love to claim that the public school system is the shining success story of the American political system. And even when the schools break down in effectiveness, liberals double down on their support for them and insist that we spend ever larger chunks of the taxpayer’s money to “fix” them.
Of course, even as liberal politicians constantly extol the virtues of the public schools they are quietly sending their own kids to private schools. These hypocrites don’t seem to mind sending the public’s kids to subpar, failing schools but they’ll be damned that they’ll do so with their own kids.
Apparently it isn’t just politicians that are admitting with their actions that the public schools are a failure, though. The Chicago Tribune had a shocking statistic in a recent report on the hypocrisy of politicians re the public schools.
As recently as 2004, a Thomas B. Fordham Institute study found that 39 percent of CPS teachers sent their own kids to private schools.
So, while Chicago Public School teachers are consistently voting to force destructive union rules on the Chicago Public Schools, those same CPS teachers are sending their own kids to private schools where unions are often less prevalent.
These CPS teachers are double hypocrites. Insisting on enforcing union rules on CP schools while sending their own kids to union-free schools and tacitly admitting that CP schools are so bad that they won’t send their own kids to them.
It looks more everyday that the only way to be a liberal is to be a total hypocrite.
(H/T Newsalert.)
Apparently former Senator Rick Santorum is trolling the waters to see if the time is right to throw his hat in the ring to run for the GOP nomination for president in 2012. He appeared in Des Moines, Iowa meeting with members of the state’s contingent of American Principles Project.
Santorum was once a Senator from Pennsylvania but lost his seat in the Obama sweep of Congress in 2008.
One of the subject Santorum discussed was right to work laws. Apparently, he’s against a national law for such. According to the Caffeinated Thoughts blog, Santorum said that he felt that this was a state issue, not a national one.
On Right to Work – He doesn’t support a national right to work law. He thinks states can handle that. He said he would take on the unions, but he is focusing on federal marriage amendment. He noted was the only conservative senator elected in a heavy union state. That he was focused on the life issue, No one in the Republican Party in Pennsylvania has taken on the life issue.” He said not only was his votes in the Senate prolife and pro-marriage, he said he led on those issues. He felt that in order to represent his constituents well he needed to be neutral on labor. If he were President if Congress sent him a National Right to Work bill to sign he would sign it. It isn’t the private trade unions are the problem, it is the public employee unions as they are funded by taxpayers — He said those unions are “an anathema.” He said he was willing to take on that issue.
See more of Santorum’s appearance at the Caffeinated Thoughts blog.
-By J. Christian Adams
What does a Sebastian Junger documentary and the Department of Justice have to do with each other? A lot, especially when the DOJ thinks computers are the answer to protecting military voting rights. Before the next election, every attorney responsible for protecting military voting rights should have to watch this Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance.
During the 2010 election, the Department of Justice was responsible for enforcing the MOVE Act of 2009. The MOVE Act was designed to fix the problems with military voting that had plagued American elections as far back as the Revolutionary War. Servicemembers were simply disenfranchised because they were not sent a ballot early enough for it to be cast and mailed back in the United States by election day. Exacerbating the problem was a Department of Justice that implemented a Keystone Kops enforcement policy in 2008 by deploying [1] inept investigative techniques wholly incapable protecting military voting rights.
The MOVE Act of 2009 mandated that ballots be mailed at least 45 days before an election. But a law is only as good as the people enforcing it.
Instead of strictly enforcing the law, the Department of Justice failed to enforce military voting rights quickly and effectively throughout the fall of 2010. Instead of taking the new law seriously, DOJ officials telegraphed [2] to state election officials they didn’t want to sue any of them for noncompliance. Instead of quickly and aggressively litigating against states who failed to mail ballots 45 days in advance, DOJ cut deals [3] with states like Wisconsin that required ballots only be mailed 32 days before the election. Instead of monitoring compliance with the law, DOJ needed Pajamas Media to break the news [4] three weeks after the deadline that Illinois failed to mail military ballots overseas…..
Read the rest at Pajamas Media.
As we discussed a few days ago, Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid still intends to push the bill that wold nationalize all police and firefighter unions.
The bill is titled the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act (S 3391) and would force all local, city, county, and state police and firefighter unions to operate under nationalized union rules created by union bosses based in Washington D.C. This bill would take away the power of local governments to control their own first responders and this would necessarily take away all power from you, the voters, too.
Reid tried to get cloture on this one last week but did not get it done. We are still on the watch for him to push this abomination against local control at any time.
On Dec. 15, The Heritage Foundation also warned its members about this horrible bill.
The Senate may soon consider a bill that would force states to allow for the unionization of public employees. In addition to the extraordinary amount of mandates imposed under President Obama, Congress has been attempting to extend the burden of collective bargaining imposed upon every state and local government. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) recently reintroduced the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act in an attempt to rush it through Congress before Republicans take control of the House in January. This legislation would mandate collective bargaining for police, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel—even in states that have passed laws to ensure this can’t happen.
Please do not forget to call you senators and tell them to oppose this bill.
L.A.’s mayor has blasted his old bosses for blocking reforms and protecting bad teachers. Could the unions’ charmed political life finally be ending? We can only hope so.
Antonio Villaraigosa was once an organizer for United Teachers of Los Angeles and a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association. Now mayor of Los Angeles, he has been a staunch liberal throughout his political career. So his speech last week at a Sacramento conference of the Public Policy Institute of California was bound to make news in a man-bites-dog way.
Here’s a sample of what he said about his old employer, UTLA:
“Over the past five years, while (I was) partnering with students, parents and nonprofits, business groups, higher education, charter organizations, school district leadership, elected board members and teachers, there has been one, unwavering roadblock to reform: UTLA union leadership.”
Here’s another:
“At every step of the way, when Los Angeles was coming together to effect real change in our public schools, UTLA was there to fight against the change and slow the pace of reform.”
Villaraigosa also had plenty to say about the type of reform he wanted to see. And it was not what the union would have wanted to hear….
Read the rest at Investor’s Business Daily.
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty penned a great op ed in the Wall Street Journal that takes public employee unions to task for their greed and their destructive nature. I’ve said many times that public employee unions are antithetical to good government and should be outlawed. Pawlenty agrees that they make good governing impossible.
Public employees have not always had the luxury of unions. The idea that government employees should be allowed to enter into collective bargaining didn’t exist prior to 1958. The fact is, we will never be able to fix our public pension problems until we go back to a pre-1958 stance on public employee unions. They should be eliminated completely.
Now I don’t usually post whole articles. But this one is too good to just excerpt. I hope WSJ can excuse me…
Government Unions vs. Taxpayers
The moral case for unions–protecting working families from exploitation–does not apply to public employment.
-By Tim Pawlenty
When Americans think of organized labor, they might think of images like I saw growing up in a blue-collar meatpacking town: hard hats, work boots, tough conditions and gritty jobs. While I didn’t work in the slaughterhouses, I did become a union member when I worked at a grocery store to help put myself through school. I was grateful for the paycheck and proud of the work I did.
The rise of the labor movement in the early 20th century was a triumph for America’s working class. In an era of deep economic anxiety, unions stood up for hard-working but vulnerable families, protecting them from physical and economic exploitation.
Much has changed. The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or “strong back” jobs. They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming “industry” left in our economy. Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.
Federal employees receive an average of $123,049 annually in pay and benefits, twice the average of the private sector. And across the country, at every level of government, the pattern is the same: Unionized public employees are making more money, receiving more generous benefits, and enjoying greater job security than the working families forced to pay for it with ever-higher taxes, deficits and debt.
How did this happen? Very quietly. The rise of government unions has been like a silent coup, an inside job engineered by self-interested politicians and fueled by campaign contributions.
Public employee unions contribute mightily to the campaigns of liberal politicians ($91 million in the midterm elections alone) who vote to increase government pay and workers. As more government employees join the unions and pay dues, the union bosses pour ever more money and energy into liberal campaigns. The result is that certain states are now approaching default. Decades of overpromising and fiscal malpractice by state and local officials have created unfunded public employee benefit liabilities of more than $3 trillion.
Over the last eight years in Minnesota, we have taken decisive action to prevent our problems from becoming a state crisis. Public employee unions fought us virtually every step of the way. Mass transit employees, for example, went on strike for 44 days in 2005–because we refused to grant them lifetime health-care benefits after working just 15 years. It was a tough fight, but in the end Minnesota taxpayers won.
We reworked benefits for new hires. We required existing employees to contribute more to their pensions. We reformed our public employee health plan and froze wages.
We proved that even in deep-blue Minnesota, taxpayers can take on big government and big labor, and win. In coming years, that fight will have to be joined throughout the country in city halls, state capitals and in Washington, D.C.
Reformers would be wise to adopt three overriding principles.
First, we need to bring public employee compensation back in line with the private sector and reduce the overall size of the federal civilian work force. Mr. Obama’s proposal to freeze federal pay is a step in the right direction, but it falls well short of shrinking government and eliminating the pay premium enjoyed by federal employees.
Second, get the numbers right. Government should start using the same established accounting standards that private businesses are required to use, so we can accurately assess unfunded liabilities.
Third, we need to end defined-benefit retirement plans for government employees. Defined-benefit systems have created a financial albatross for taxpayers. The private sector dropped them years ago in favor of the clarity and predictability of defined-contribution models such as 401(k) plans. This change alone can save taxpayers trillions of dollars.
The moral case for unions–protecting working families from exploitation–does not apply to public employment. Government employees today are among the most protected, well-paid employees in the country. Ironically, public-sector unions have become the exploiters, and working families once again need someone to stand up for them.
If we’re going to stop the government unions’ silent coup, conservative reformers around the country must fight this challenge head on. The choice between big government and everyday Americans isn’t a hard one.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston